Carlos Duro Yague

In the last week, I have been reading some of my peers work, trying to find the blog post that catches more my attention, I decided to write my peer review on Olivia Andrews Post 2 – Themes Reflection on how the Better Lives lectures may change her way of working in the future. For me was really interesting to see a peer´s opinion related to the Better Lives themes within the actual situation of the world, and even more because she did a different better lives project than me and I founded interesting how she focuses on each theme.

I completely agree with Olivia in her second paragraph talking about how we are seen during these weeks the impacts of the consequences of the poor social responsibility of the industry putting humans’ lives at risk. We should take the actual global problem as a lesson to improve the social responsibility of each industry. As well in the third paragraph, she reflects in a very interesting way about that how the planet is recovering from the pollution in just a few months and this should make us think about how powerful we could be if we change our production system in order to produce less pollution, we could slow the global warming, and this lockdown demonstrates it perfectly. It is true that is the time for the big brands to take a step and reduce their footprints, and in my opinion, this is in part in the hands of the consumers and their petitions.

Olivia is a media student, and I feel that my practice is related to the media as well and I would add that she could expand more in the theme of diversity as I think the diversity goes further than just representing minority groups, I would add that diversity should be represented in each content just clarifying that nothing should be normalized as a general rule, because in this world each person have a reality, and we should create a general aesthetic that everyone should feel included. Putting apart the human’s physics and showing the people as a human body and not a classification because of the skin, weight, or race. etc

In conclusion, I agree with Olivia and how she approaches each theme. I found really interesting to see how other peer reflects these themes and makes me feel happy because I feel that these lectures have to make a change in her way of thinking like what happens to me when I saw the lectures and probably most of the students. It is impressive how much we could change as a new fashion generation. In the end, she thinks over how the Fashion Journalism project from Better Lives has made an impact on her and how she can be influenced by these themes in her future work, and I think this is really good because it was on of the goals of the project.

Olivia Andrews Post 2 – Themes Reflection:

After weeks of learning and research, I had developed more my point of view of the brands and their social communication. As I learn in the better lives lectures, the power of social media is incredibly high, and the famous brands have a lot of power because they have a lot of followers and they create advertising campaigns that reach a high amount of people every single hour. The brands communicate their principles in each advertising that they do, and every single detail that they choose matters. It is a fact that the brand in order to achieve more followers and potential customers they follow the guidelines of the society, but they need to be careful because they need to take care as well of their public image and what principles are they instilling in society. In these days is really important for a brand to create an impeccable public relationship, because a good first impression gets the attention of the customers.

Our brand was Zaful, and I need to say that I got really angry when I saw the brand because I don’t know why we need to spend our time in a brand that is fast fashion, that is basically the opposite of fashion, but I work on the project motivated because was a big challenge.

The social media communication of the brand is one of the best in the industry, achieving a high number of customers every single day increasing national and international sales. As a famous brand, it takes care of the public image and they work on improving an eco-friendly production system. We choose one of the best charities on mental health for young people because we thought that is the best choice due that the models that the brand uses in their social media and advertising could affect persons who are already struggling with body image. The social media advertising that we create was based in the most effective ways to achieve people in these days, is really important for the brands to collaborate with influencers and show their new clothes as much as possible, as well we believe that the social media advertising is the most effective nowadays.

In conclusion, in the better lives unit messaging fashion project, I have learned about how to develop a brand and how to build a responsible public relationship. Connecting with the society is a privilege of the big brands and is also a responsivity. I learned that fashion brands are more than clothes and ads, is also a way to connect people and to deal with problems that society has. The brand growing is not just increasing sales, it is also a development of a responsible philosophy to project to the public ethical principles and to fulfill their social responsibilities as an influence channel.

I found it really interesting most of the Better Lives themes, but specifically, I think that the themes of Diversity, Social Responsibility, and Inclusion are all very relevant in my project of Better Lives Messaging Fashion. By taking notes on all the lectures I realize that the fashion industry just moves around the money and not around the art of fashion. These days the young generations are realizing the problems and injustices in the fashion industry and as creators and customers are demanding changes to the companies. An is really good news that a big number of fashion brands are changing their way of working to be more responsible in all the possible ways.

After listening to some lectures, I thought about how can I change my way of working in the present and in the future in order to be a more responsible part of the fashion industry as a fashion photographer. In lecture 4 I have reflected on how we are all responsible for creating an inclusive environment with all kinds of people, and even more the people who are dedicated to communicating fashion like the photographers. It is so important to create content that includes different types of models, including people of different ages and people with different types of disabilities in order to create a much more inclusive fashion environment. I think as a photographer I will change my future casting in order to be more inclusive.

As I learn in the Social Responsibility lecture, our practice has more meaning than what we think. The media as a lot of power in society and we should change the way it works in order to make it more inclusive. The diversity goes farther than just male and female or white or black skin. As a future fashion photographer after seeing these lectures, I know how I can improve my practice to create better lives, starting with a more inclusive casting and continuing to work with new people regardless of where they come from or how much money they have.

I am responsible for creating responsible content within society and content that cannot cause any harm to anyone, it is important to value all minorities and majorities of society to not to continue creating unfair content, this will maybe mean to change the scheme established in advertising. As well to hire people with mental problems who can work on the creation of content (so the staff is more diverse) is part of our responsibility as creatives, to give opportunities to all people who want to work in this industry and not the established scheme so far.

We can all improve the way we work to change the bad parts of this industry, and we can start by changing stereotypes and creating more human art. Giving more importance to equality and to art than to the profit.

One of the lectures that cached more my attention was Lecture 2; Anna Fitzpatrick, Culture. In this lecture, I realized a bit more about the actual problem in society; sustainability, fashion, and consumer culture. I was very surprised after seeing the statistics of consumption of the last years, and how society has adopted a lifestyle around unsustainable consumerism. It is impressive how everything is connected and how little details can have a major impact.

When we buy clothes, we choose which brand we are supporting with our money, and I think we should use this vote opportunity to support the brands that have a responsible program with the environment and respect human rights in all the processes.

In my opinion, a really good way to reduce the impact that the fashion industry is causing to the planet is to buy less and to buy products that can be wear for a longer time. The clothing from years ago was more resistant because was made from a high-quality resource and a much more careful manufacturing process with the goal of good quality and not a goal of reducing costs to increase profit, we confirm nowadays that some vintage clothes are perfectly usable after being produced 50 years ago. As a new generation, we should try to change this way of business, it is our responsibility to improve the industry in order to create better lives and stop destroying our planet. After seeing the lectures, I thought that maybe we should change the actual way of communicating fashion to increase the power of sustainable brands.

Maybe we should adapt our life’s in order to work less and waste less, but this is not compatible with most of the established economies in the developed countries, but that does not mean that is impossible to change it.

Now as a young fashion customer I had reduced my consumption of clothing and I buy less than a third of what I bought a few years ago and I also limit myself to buying high-quality products or second-hand clothes.

If the fashion industry could change some parts of the business could create better lives. If all clothing brands started to be responsible in the production process, a lot of workers would start having a decent life with a fair salary to pay for normal living expenses. As well if the agricultural processes of production of the material, were responsible for the environment, the industry would damage less the earth and the number of people affected by pollution in developing countries will be reduced as well.

As a fashion photographer I had think about my ethics in work after saw most of the lectures and I had marked as a new goal to work only with responsible fashion brands in order to reduce the power of the big fast fashion brands and support the sustainable brands that take care about the planet and about the people behind the brand.